The hunt was on today to find out just when the UK has last suffered such a deep recession followed by such a feeble recovery. Worse than the early 1990s? The slump that followed the Lawson boom of the late 1980s is not even in the same league as the recent downturn.

Deeper than the decimation of Britain's industrial heartlands in the early 1980s? Yes, and by this stage three decades ago the economy was bouncing back with vigour. Worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s? Amazingly, that is what the data suggests, not least because Britain stole a march on the rest of the world by being the first country to come off the Gold Standard in September 1931.

Michael Saunders of Citigroup won the prize for the most bearish comparison, noting that the record of the past five years was the weakest UK recession-recovery in the past 100 years (world wars excluded). And, judging by today's updated estimate of the economy's performance in the final three months of 2011 this long and miserable saga is not over yet.

Here's what we know. There has been no growth in the economy since September 2010, with three quarters of falling output punctuated by two quarters of expansion. To all intents and purposes Britain has had a double dip recession, even though the technical definition of two successive quarters of negative growth has not been met.

The problem, despite the misleading spin put on the figures by the Treasury today, has not been exports and it has not been the crisis in the eurozone. Net trade contributed to growth last year: without a narrowing of the current account growth would have been lower than the 0.7% actually recorded in 2011.

Instead, the real drag on the economy has been household consumption, by far the biggest element of gross domestic product. This fell dramatically during the deep slump of 2008-09, recovered slightly in late 2009 and 2010, and then declined for a further 12 months until picking up in the final three months of 2011. Consumers were hard hit last year by rising inflation, which topped 5% as a result of rising oil prices, the increase in VAT and the higher cost of imported goods caused by a lower pound. Prices were going up far more rapidly than earnings, which is why real incomes (ie adjusted for prices) fell more strongly than at any time since 1977.

Nick Parsons, chief strategist at National Australia Bank, notes that in the cycles of the early 1980s and early 1990s, the economy really started to motor 13 quarters after the downturn began, but that hasn't happened this time. In the 1980s, falling oil prices and financial deregulation helped boost activity; in the early 1990s the fillip came from leaving the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

This time all the recent shocks - oil prices, the Japanese tsunami, the euro debt crisis - have been negative. Add these unfortunate events to an economy that is structurally flawed and what do you get? A lost decade.

Britain's economy shrank even more than expected at the end of last year, according to official data that has underlined the UK's struggle to avoid recession. Here's what economists made of the revision